


You Must Know Life To See Decay (Walk Straight Down the Middle remix)

by rivkat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: kamikazeremix, Depression, Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 10:58:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivkat/pseuds/rivkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We thought it was all over, but it wasn’t.  It hadn’t started yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Must Know Life To See Decay (Walk Straight Down the Middle remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).
  * Inspired by [You Must Know Life To See Decay](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/9852) by geckoholic. 
  * Inspired by [You Must Know Life To See Decay](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/9852) by geckoholic. 



> Thanks to giandujakiss for beta

For a while, Sam hopes Dean will die of liver failure. Sounds terrible, right? But step back a second. By the time they kill Dick Roman, Dean gets the shakes if he waits too long to start drinking. And it’s not like they can check him into the Betty Ford Clinic. Sam keeps his mouth shut and sometimes he imagines living long enough to watch Dean drink himself to death. He _hopes_ there’ll still be a world around long enough for Dean’s body to give out. Sam’s hardly in a position to judge what keeps Dean going. Yeah, it hurts when Dean chooses the bottle over Sam, but Dean always comes back.

Dean has always come back.

Purgatory is a different kind of interruption. Dean returns, as far as Sam can tell, no longer a full-blown alcoholic. Sam can’t imagine what detox had been like. Quite possibly Dean would have died if he’d tried it in the human world. People do die from going cold turkey; Sam’s looked it up.

Even more mindblowing: Dean doesn’t resume drinking like it’s a contact sport. So Sam stops looking for the signs of organ failure and starts to think about the good kind of dying in bed. (No, not like _that_ , though Sam lets the Dean in his head make the joke.) “I want a house,” he says, and lets Dean hear what he’s really saying: we’ve earned it. We’ve done enough. There is no more saving the world in us, and there’s no reason to die chasing one more ghost.

Dean doesn’t agree outright, which is only to be expected. Sam can wear him down. He can let their circumstances speak for themselves: Dean’s nightmares, Dean’s inability to sit quietly in a restaurant if someone drops a glass—they have to leave more than one place in a hurry when Dean doesn’t manage to stop himself from pulling a gun at an unexpected sound—and Dean’s exhaustion.

Dean’s barely speaking at all, beyond what’s necessary to get the job done, and sometimes not even that: he’ll push a book over in Sam’s direction instead of saying, hey, Braniac, take a look at this. Sometimes Sam says “what?” and pretends not to understand, because Dean’s silence is the most obvious indication of just how badly Dean’s doing. Or because Sam needs Dean’s voice to remind him that he’s not in Hell (for now) and Dean’s not in Purgatory (for now), that they survived. Dean explaining the world to him was how Sam grew up, and even if that changed, Dean’s voice is the guide rope that has always brought Sam back, even when he was deepest in his Lucifer dreams.

Sam thinks that staying in one place, as unfamiliar as it will be, will help Dean. But he puts it as something that _he_ wants, because he hopes Dean still wants to take care of his little brother. 

He brings it up at odd moments. Dean won’t expect anything less from him. They’re burying a body: a vampire’s last victim. This man is not directly their fault. He was dead before the Winchesters got into town, but unfound. Burial is the least they can do for him. Sam pauses before putting his shovel away and says to the open trunk, “We could have a home, not just a car.” He’s not disrespecting the Impala. Sam will never admit how much he missed the car, how he thinks Dean maybe missed it less even though he loves it more, because Dean knows so much better how to give things up for their own good. But it’s still true that there’s more in the world than a classic car, however beautiful and beloved. “We could build something.”

“Tried that,” Dean says, the one and only time he alludes to Lisa and Ben, and then he doesn’t talk for three days. 

Sam talks at him in self-defense. Total silence is too much like still being crazy. Sam tells him about the places he went while he was soulless, and sometimes he accidentally says a bit too much about what he did there. It’s Dean’s own fault if he hears too much.

And then, just when Sam is starting to think of pranks that might surprise Dean into cursing, Dean pulls the car over and starts crying. Not the silent stoic tears Sam kind of expects, but ugly, snotty sobs, and the scariest part is that Dean doesn’t cringe away from Sam. He doesn’t fight when Sam reaches over to hold him, and he doesn’t lean into Sam either. He just … cries, stiff and so close to not-there that Sam’s almost grateful for the crying. It means Dean isn’t entirely lost in his own head.

Sam wonders if this is what it was like for Dean when he was having his own Hell-flashbacks.

When Dean finally finishes, he’s asleep. Sam would like to pretend that Dean’s just embarrassed and faking sleep, but that would be a comforting lie, and Sam’s had more than enough of those in his life. He doesn’t react when Sam gets out of the car, goes around to the driver’s seat, and shoves Dean across the bench into the passenger side.

Sam drives them to another motel. The next day, Dean speaks: he demands breakfast, bitch. “Bitch” gets said hesitantly, like Dean knows it’s expected but isn’t quite sure why, but Sam will take it. Sam starts looking for a place to live before the hash browns are fried.

Dean keeps crying. Not continuously, but Sam can’t determine the pattern. Crying happens, like a fart or a burp or some other manifestation of the prison that is the human body, and Dean doesn’t seem interested in controlling it.

Sam tries ignoring Dean’s jags. He stops that pretty quick because he starts worrying that maybe he’s the one who’s crazy: maybe Dean’s not crying at all, because Dean sure as fuck doesn’t act like anything happened, even though Dean’s not driving any more because of that time that he didn’t bother to turn the wheel and they nearly died pinned in a ditch. (Sam wonders, idly, who would have brought them back, with Cas off the field. Crowley, maybe; it’s the kind of thing that asshole would do.)

He tries talking about the tears. “What are you thinking when it happens?” he asks, in Illinois by the side of the road where he stopped to wait it out, because he feels like a jerk driving while Dean is sobbing beside him. 

Dean blinks at him. “Nothing,” he says, his face still wet. 

Sam’s heart turns over in terror, because Sam believes him.

Then Sam tries talking about his own troubles, whether as a distraction or as a model for Dean he’s not sure: addiction, guilt, Hell. That last seems to accelerate Dean’s own bad spells, so he stops pretty quick.

Charlie Bradbury is eventually convinced to give them a bunch of money to leave her alone. (Sam thinks “them,” but of course it’s Sam doing all the pestering. Sam’s taken over interacting with the outside world. Okay, in non-crisis situations Dean’s always been erratic, too much or too little or just _too_ , but now Dean has a worrying tendency to let his face collapse and turn away, leaving Sam to explain how Dean just lost his wife, just lost his mother, just lost. It’s easier on everyone if Sam leaves Dean behind and takes care of business.) Sam buys them a small house, practically free, in Florida. Hate Broward County he might, but foreclosures have made the state as affordable as it is temperate, and it’s not like there are some areas of the country that are chock full of _good_ memories to which they might return.

“You think having a place to live means we get to stop?” Dean asks, but that’s his last overt resistance. And no, Sam doesn’t really think that: they know what comes after death and it’s not over, never over. The house could crumble to dust, with their bones forgotten inside it, and somebody might still have a use for Sam and Dean and pop them back up like targets in a shooting game. But he’s just—he needs a break.

Sam’s hoping that the house, which is less a fixer-upper than a put-me-back-togetherer, will spark Dean’s longstanding interest in making things work. The wiring on the second floor is faulty and the basement could use a full—well, whatever people do to make basements tolerable; Sam’s not an expert. And there are a couple of days when Dean seems completely into it—he makes lists, he orders Sam around, he measures and putters and generally does exactly what Sam wants him to be doing. Sam doesn’t complain when Dean stops checking off items. Dean deserves to be able to leave a few things unfinished.

The house freaks Sam out. (Sam’s aware of the irony.) It makes noises. It has _stairs_ inside. College was dorm rooms and apartments; he never had all this _space_. He always had someone to take care of leaky pipes. It takes an anonymous note for him to realize that he’s supposed to mow the lawn. 

He gets Dean a hand mower, and Dean can get through the front or the back, not both, before he just runs down. Since Dean’s pride is apparently no longer operating, it’s up to Sam to haul him back indoors, just as it’s up to Sam to make sure that Dean has sunscreen on before he starts. Sam tries to think of this as payback: Dean changed his diapers. Actually, it’s a small favor that Dean isn’t pissing himself during his episodes. But if he starts, Sam will take care of that too.

Sam plays Dean’s music. Then Sam plays country, and gets no better or worse a reaction. Sam sings along to the classics and waits for Dean to join in. His own voice dwindles when Dean doesn’t. Sam puts Dr. Sexy on when Dean’s in the living room, and when that causes _him_ to twitch, he turns it to another soap and Dean seems no worse off.

Then one morning Sam goes into the garage and finds the Impala, abandoned mid-repair. Don’t ask Sam what; he’s never had to know. This isn’t like the half-painted wall in the study, or the unfinished grout in the upstairs bathroom. This is Dean bleeding out, unstitched.

He researches. Dean’s symptoms are unusual, but why should they be any different from the rest of their lives? Dean won’t go to therapy. Sam could drag him, but that might trigger real catatonia. It’s not a chance he’s willing to take. Anyway, Sam no longer trusts outsiders. Even if a shrink believed them, which doesn’t seem likely, they’re wanted criminals, or would be if they weren’t known to be dead criminals (twice over) instead. Hospitals and inpatient therapy—because any doctor worth a white coat would want Dean committed—are just too high risk.

“We deserve to be done,” Sam tells Dean. Dean doesn’t answer, so Sam fills in the blanks: Done isn’t the same as okay, as Dean is busy proving. Anyway, ‘done’ is a tricky concept. Hell is Hell, and Heaven’s unacceptable. Sam could’ve gotten used to the idea, but he understands why Dean’s too resentful. And if Dean would get better just by going to Heaven, then he wouldn’t be Dean.

Sam’s no saint. He yells at Dean when Dean leaves the water running so that it seeps through the floor and rains into the kitchen. He yells at Dean when Dean won’t fucking acknowledge him. He yells at Dean because Dean has given up, has left Sam alone (but not quite), and it’s not worse than Dean being in Hell but it’s surprisingly close to _Sam_ being in Hell. 

When he says that, Dean twitches. The line of his back says: leave, then. That’s what you do. (Sam hopes that’s what Dean is feeling, because that means Dean’s present enough to feel.)

“I’m never going to leave you,” Sam says, resigned. Dean, as per the new normal, has no comment.

Sam tries to get a social life. He goes to coffee shops and meets people. He picks up some work tutoring high school kids. They don’t need the money—Charlie and her mad Social Security hacking skills have ensured that—but it’s a change of pace. He joins a group of guys who play basketball every Wednesday night, and he learns all the good running routes in their neighborhood. He volunteers at the local community center, putting together the schedules and sending out the weekly email updates. He gets busy enough that he’s exhausted by day’s end. Sometimes Dean’s in different places when Sam returns home; sometimes he’s in the same place and Sam only knows he’s moved because the refrigerator door is open. Sometimes he’s in the same place and Sam thinks he might’ve been there all day.

Sam explains, justifies, talks himself hoarse. I just need this, Dean. I’ll come back. I always come back. Dean blinks at nothing; for the first time in his life, Dean doesn’t have anything to say about Sam’s plans. Talk to me, Sam begs. Just let me know you’re—you’re still in there. Dean doesn’t. There was a time when Sam would chant, “shut up shut up shut up” over and over, holding his ears closed, while Dean gave some crass rundown on a girl he’d fucked. Or did Sam make that up? Let’s face it, being more stable than Dean is grading on a pretty low curve.

One day Sam brings home a puppy. Cheaply manipulative, yes, but he’s also lonely. Sam doesn’t bring people home. 

Dean won’t walk the dog. He’ll be passive on the couch or in front of the bathroom mirror when Sam comes home and the dog is jumping at the door, desperate to be let out. Sam gives her food and water, same as he puts plates and glasses in front of Dean. Sometimes the dog sits next to Dean on the couch in the living room while he sits in front of the TV and the images play across his face, flicker in his unmoving eyes.

After four months, during which Sam starts to wonder if he even remembers what Dean sounds like when he cracks jokes and insults Sam’s hair, Sam has one more idea. 

He sets up the spell in the living room. Dean’s already there, and it’s not like Sam has to worry about doing damage that visitors might notice.

The being he summons turns out to look like a beautiful woman: shiny dark hair, sympathetic smile. “You’re not what I expected from a Reaper,” he says, because he thought he was beyond surprise.

She shrugs. “I’m Tessa. Dean and I go back.”

If she was appearing in this guise, that meant that Dean had worked his limited but often effective charm on her. Sam took a moment to be grateful for that; it could help. “I need to make sure that when we die, we don’t go anywhere, and we don’t get resurrected.”

She doesn’t seem fazed by the request. She may well know the backstory, the way so many supernatural creatures seem to. “That’s not something we guarantee. You don’t get spoilers.” 

“We’re not regular people.” 

Tessa’s eyes are on Dean, for which Sam can hardly blame her. She speaks to him, though. “I know that. We thought you’d be bringing us big business. Two apocalypses, by my count. But you saved the world, and then Dean left it without even saying goodbye. Came back, though, which ought to count for something.” 

“Yeah,” Sam says. “We’ve been through too much. We’ve been pulled out of Heaven and pulled out of Hell and we want to rest. We want— _not_ to be.” 

“That’s a big ask,” Tessa says, and Sam leans forward, because it’s the first hint she’s given that it’s doable. “That kind of intervention, it’s not something we ordinarily do. Even with all your accumulated mojo, you’d still need a sacrifice. Something you value. Trouble is, Sam, that’s a short list now.” 

“The house,” Sam says immediately. 

“Don’t make me laugh,” she says, unsmiling.

“The car.” 

“Not yours to give.” 

“The dog.” 

“You’ve never even given it a name.” 

Sam swallows. “My hand,” he offers. He’ll go to two if he has to, or maybe a hand and a foot would be easier. 

She tilts her head. “Very close! But not quite.” 

“My eyes,” Sam blurts. He’ll manage somehow. 

“Getting closer,” she tsks. “Try next door.” 

That takes him a second. “Dean? I thought you said it had to be mine to give.” 

Tessa lets that one sit for a long time. 

“I can’t—I can’t give away anything of Dean’s. I _can’t_.” 

“Well, he’s not gonna do it,” she sighs, waving her hand in front of his eyes. “So it’s got to be you.” 

What can Dean live without? Better, Sam thinks, to ask what he _can’t_. Wait, no. It would have to be Sam’s sacrifice, Tessa already said that. Something of Dean’s, but Sam’s sacrifice. 

“Dean?” he asks. “Please, Dean, just this one more time. I need you.”

Dean blinks. “Sam,” he says, almost inaudible. It’s the first time he’s said Sam’s name in months. The sound’s like a rush of clean air into the room; Sam breathes deep. Then Dean shuts down; Sam can see it in the way that his shoulders loosen and his eyes go hazy.

A sacrifice. Something Dean can give up, and Sam can bear the burden of.

“His voice,” Sam says, and his own is not shaking.

“Acceptable,” she says. She almost sounds sympathetic. “When you kick it, you two are done for good. You’ll go nowhere and no one will ever be able to resurrect you. We aren’t demons, but—” She stands on her tiptoes, and Sam accepts her kiss. Her lips are warm, falsely human. She bends down and kisses Dean too, even though Dean doesn’t respond. “I’ll be seeing you.” She winks out of existence, and they are alone again, and Sam has just given away Dean’s voice.

Dean doesn’t cry. He doesn’t smile. 

The dog—Sam really should give her a name—jumps into Dean’s lap.

Slowly, slowly, Dean’s hand comes up and begins to pet her.

Sam sits down on the ratty couch, which settles a full inch—the two of them have never been on it together, Sam too afraid to encroach on Dean’s space—and watches, barely breathing. After a while, he edges close enough to lean against Dean’s shoulder. Maybe he’s imagining it, but he almost feels a counterpressure. 

Sam scratches the dog’s head and feels his brother beside him and waits.

END


End file.
